A Bambina or Bambino of Our Own

I Want To

Over the next month and a half, Carina slowly started to feel more like herself as her meds started working and she went to therapy often, for the first few weeks it was twice a week to help her with her postpartum anxiety. She was now down to once a week and was getting ready to go back to work in a week which was making her super anxious, but she was working on it. It made her feel a little better that Maya was going to be home with the girls and not some nanny or daycare worker.

Maya was getting better at being there to support her too, helping her through the irrational panic when someone else wanted to hold the babies or when she woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking something was wrong with the twins. Sleeping was getting better in the past few weeks finally which was helped by the fact that the girls dropped their midnight feed, meaning they slept from 8 pm to 4 am most of the time, and then would go back down from 4:30 until 8 am.

Maya had been working in her office again at least a few days a week, needing to get things in order before she went on leave. Her battalion was relatively used to having no battalion chief in charge, having lost Sullivan right before the pandemic and then having to function without any battalion chief for eleven long months because of the pandemic. Maya was still going to be around and doing work here and there when she could, but most of her time was going to be spent with her daughters.

Today, however, she was at work, trying to get through all her captains one-on-ones before her leave started.

Carina was at home with the girls, finally feeling like she was starting to enjoy her time with them.

At almost 3 months old, they were getting bigger and more fun. They were both smiling, especially at their Mommy and Mamma, and they were so close to laughing too. Rowan had started rolling over the week before and Nora was getting close, although she hated tummy time so much that she screamed through most of it every day.

Carina was feeling particularly tired, although she was blaming at least some of that on the fact that Nora had a hard time sleeping the night before, spending 2-5 am up fussing, not even wanting to eat much at her 4 am feed. Maya and Carina had taken turned trying to soothe the baby but nothing worked until finally, at 5 am, the little girl had a massive blow out, covering both herself and Maya, who was trying to calm her down, in baby poop. After a quick shower, Nora had finally settled, just in time for Maya to get up for her run.

Carina had never gotten back to sleep after that so after feeding the girls at eight and playing with them for about an hour, she put them in their bassinets before laying down in her own bed, falling asleep quickly.

When she woke up, she knew something was wrong. She had terrible chills, her left breast was beyond painful, and she just felt sick. She knew immediately what was going on and she grabbed her phone, calling her OB and friend.

"Carina," Danielle said, "Is everything alright?"

"No," Carina said, body protesting as she forced herself to stand up, "I think I have mastitis. I feel terrible."

"Red and inflamed breast tissue?" Danielle asked, already going to her computer, knowing her colleague knew what the infection looked like.

"Si," Carina said, lifting her shirt to confirm, "And a fever I think. And the chills and body aches."

"I'll put in an antibiotic for you," Danielle said, "And if the fever doesn't go away in the next 48 hours or goes over 103 and won't come down with meds..."

"I will come in," Carina said, "Thank you."

"Of course," Danielle said, "Feel better."

Carina had had patients complain about this kind of infection before, but experiencing it herself gave her a whole new level of empathy.